


tangled (my soul & yours)

by OceanMyth



Category: Avatar: The Last Airbender
Genre: Aang (Avatar) Is A Good Parent, F/M, Fluff and Angst, Hair, Hair Braiding, aang pines, im so glad that's a tag, its soft until its sad, katara's hair, kinda onbrand for me though tbh, your face looks like the person you loved most in your last life
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-12
Updated: 2020-09-15
Packaged: 2021-03-06 21:07:01
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 1,681
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26425357
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/OceanMyth/pseuds/OceanMyth
Summary: Aang's relationship with hair braiding, from the first time he does it, to the last.
Relationships: Aang & Katara (Avatar), Aang & Kya II (Avatar), Aang/Katara (Avatar), Katara & Korra (Avatar)
Comments: 31
Kudos: 114





	1. (fascinated)

For most of his life, Aang doesn’t pay much attention to hair, or at least, the kind that grows on the top of your head. Aang does pay attention to facial hair according to the older monks, especially those who’d been responsible for raising him, and if you ask Monk Gyatso he likes to tell the story about how Aang had yanked on his mustache all the time as a baby. It never fails to embarrass Aang, though he does get his eventual revenge by dyeing Gyatso’s mustache a bright purple that clashes horribly with his robes.

Other than that, hair is just...not important to him. The nuns have hair, sure— well, some of them, plenty of nuns are fully shaven like their male counterparts— but either way, it wasn’t something that he focuses on when he visits the sister-temples. Bumi and Kuzon have hair, but it’s Bumi and Kuzon. Hair is the furthest thing from his mind when he hangs out with his friends.

Then Aang meets Katara.

And everything changes.

Katara’s hair fascinates him from the day they met. It shines under the light of the arctic sun, swings around her face, sways in the breeze. He wants to run his hands through her hair where it tumbles free of her parka’s hood, wants to know what it feels like to touch. Wants to be  _ allowed  _ to touch it, to run his hands through it, to be able to tug on it gently to tease her, and have her give him that warm smile that melted him out of the ice with its power.

He learns what her hair feels like sooner than he expected. But, rather than getting to reach out and run his hands through her hair in a moment of close companionship—  _ or maybe something more _ — he learns what it feels like in moments where Katara bends low over his shoulder to guide him through the motions of waterbending, when her hair falls softly against his back and arms, sticking against his damp skin, and it takes all of his concentration to not drop the water and soak the two of them.

It’s not how he had wanted to learn, but he’ll take what he can get.


	2. (failed)

The first time Aang gets to braid Katara’s hair, it doesn’t go very well. He’s walking on air the entire time, giddy, and he’s not paying enough attention to what he’s doing. Like most of the mistakes that Aang makes, he’s rushing headlong into something without thinking it through, without really knowing what he’s doing. Without thinking about the consequences.

“Ouch! Be more careful, Aang.”

Aang stops trying to tug his hands free of Katara’s hair, and frowns at where they disappear into the snarled mess that is now Katara’s hair. Trying to braid hair was a lot harder than trying to weave a necklace—first he’d pulled a little too hard, now he’d tangled his hands in Katara’s hair, and, well, he regrets trying to learn how to braid his girlfriend's hair— his girlfriend! Katara! Katara, his girlfriend! 

He was _Katara’s boyfriend_ ! This last thought made him more giddy than any of the previous thoughts. Somehow. Honestly, he was a little stumped as to why being Katara’s _boyfriend_ was so much more of an achievement—

“Aang!” 

He winces, and examines the knots around his fingers once again. If he doesn’t sort out what was going on with his hands and Katara’s hair soon, he may not be her boyfriend much longer.

After about an hour trying, he wasn’t able to unknot his hands from Katara’s hair, and they needed to ask Sokka to cut his hands out. Sokka was reluctantly impressed, telling Aang that he’d never come close to this level of disaster, even when he’d tried to do his own hair as a kid.   
  


Aang had been horribly embarrassed.  
  


Katara had been furious.


	3. (succeeded)

Katara doesn’t want to let him try again. Which is fine, and he gets it, he really screwed up the first time he tried. However, he’d worked hard at learning— using Toph’s hair as a practice dummy, since she didn’t care if it got too snarled— and it was frustrating that he couldn’t show Katara all the progress he’d made. But life moves on, and her hair drifts out of his mind, because there are so many other things for them to do together, so many things left to explore.

Peace is hard, and they have little time to rest, so when they steal what time they can, there are other things to think about, other than braiding. Because Aang wants to do  _ everything _ with Katara, and there is only this moment, nothing more.

The next time Katara lets him touch her hair… well, he’s not putting a braid  _ in _ her hair, but taking the intricate braids she’d done for their wedding  _ out _ . And, well, braiding is the last thing on his mind after that.

But, eventually, there does come a quiet moment, on a still morning, in their house on their island, when the fog hasn’t lifted off the water, and they are surrounded by a curtain that keeps them hidden from the world. And in that quiet moment, in that silence, Aang reaches up, and runs his hand through Katara’s hair.

It’s everything he’d wanted when he was a boy, when he’d seen her hair sparkle in the sunlight and  _ wished. _

When he asks again, his voice breaking the stillness like the wind stirring ripples across a pond, Aang knows Katara’s answer before she speaks it. 

This time, when he asks, Katara says yes.

And when he braids her hair, there is no need for scissors.


	4. (ended)

There is always a last time. 

No matter who you are, there comes a day where you do something for the last time. Aang is no exception, though he is the Avatar, and his family likes to pretend that he will always be there for them.

Sometimes these lasts are right before your death, like the last time watching the sunrise, or the last time closing your eyes. But there are some lasts that leave like the tide, drifting out into a nebulous memory that you press into your loved ones hands, a soft gift telling them  _ ‘hold me in your heart’. _

_ ‘Remember how I loved you’ _ .

The last time Aang braids someone’s hair, it is not Katara’s, but Kya’s hair. Hair that is darker than her mother’s, but feels the same in his hands. Kya is going out on a date, and Katara isn’t there to help her get ready, and his daughter, never one to settle, has some elaborate hairstyle that she wants to try, so Aang has to step in to help instead. It is not his first time braiding her hair like this— Katara is nearly as busy as he is, and they are rarely free at the same time.

They are quiet as he works, but when he finishes, he runs his hand over her cheek with trembling fingers.

“You look beautiful, sweetheart. Like your mother.” And Kya isn’t a child anymore, but she lets him bend down— only a little, Kya has inherited his height— and he drops a gentle kiss onto her forehead. She hugs him fiercely then, and Aang knows that she sees the way his hands had shaken uncontrollably as he’d braided her hair, sees the way his grip had faltered and slipped while he works, sees that the tremble in his fingers is more than a father’s pride.

“Thanks Dad,” Kya says, face pressed into his yellow robes. He wraps an arm around her then, careful not to touch his handiwork. He has come a long way, since the first time he’d tried braiding hair, since he’d first seen hair beautiful enough that he wanted to try, and he is tired.


	5. (remembered)

“Master Katara?” the little girl tugs on her parka where she’s holding it— she’s too short to be able to grab Katara’s mittens. The two are making their way back inside, after a long day learning waterbending. Katara will be returning her charge to her parents before going home, and she finds herself hoping for an excuse to spend more time with the girl.

“Yes Korra?” Katara looks down at Korra and smiles. Korra’s eyes are wide and blue, and looking into them is like looking at a version of herself that she only sees in half-remembered dreams and memories. The likeness is faint most of the time— fashion has moved on since her time, and Korra’s hairstyle changes the planes of her face just enough to hide the resemblance.

“Wouldyoupleaseteachmehowtobraid?” Korra asks in one big breath, before squishing up her face. It’s obvious she’s holding her breath as well, her cheeks are puffed up with air. Katara blinks, and takes a second to parse the sentence. Aang had always dodged directly asking her anything, and she’d always known what he was about to ask halfway through his stumbling question. Korra is his _polar_ opposite— Katara smiles to herself. She’d gotten much better at puns over the years, even if her ability to crack jokes is nowhere near where Sokka’s had been.

Then Katara realizes what the girl asked, and her throat closes up tight. Korra takes her silence as disagreement, and tries to explain something about her mother promising to teach her, but she liked Katara’s hair and wanted to learn how to do it herself.

Katara is lost in her own world at the moment and hears nothing.

“I would love that, Korra,” she says quietly, finally, having trapped her feelings back in their little box to sort out later, when Korra isn’t there to see her tears. The girl beams, and for a second Katara sees Aang, the first time she agreed to let him braid her hair. Then the spell is broken, they have arrived at Korra’s house, and Korra tugs her inside excitedly.

  
Katara smiles again, soft and secret, and follows her pupil inside. After all, not everyone can say that their hair has been braided by _two_ _Avatars_.


End file.
